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StarkWare, an Israeli blockchain infrastructure company valued at $8 billion, has launched a $4 million fund to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups in Africa as the continent embraces growing blockchain adoption.
The Africa-focused fund will provide grants of up to $150,000 to early-stage startups, with larger investments available for projects building on StarkNet, StarkWare’s proprietary decentralized application platform that operates on the Ethereum blockchain. The fund will target high-potential startups across West, South, and East Africa, focusing on teams combining strong technical skills and local business acumen to create scalable blockchain solutions.
“We are looking for projects in African countries that have economic conditions such as high inflation, unstable exchange rates, or low financial inclusion, with a local population interested in blockchain,” said Kheireddine Kamal, Head of Africa Ventures at StarkWare.
Selected startups will also receive mentorship and have the potential to secure further investments from StarkWare, up to $500,000, with the possibility of larger amounts for exceptional projects. By investing in decentralized applications (dApps) built on StarkNet, StarkWare aims to empower African businesses to bypass traditional financial systems while benefiting from blockchain’s scalability and cost-efficiency.
Africa’s youthful population—projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050—combined with rapidly increasing crypto adoption, positions the continent as a global digital powerhouse. With $6.7 trillion in consumer and business spending forecast by 2030, blockchain adoption is accelerating.
“Blockchain presents a unique opportunity for many parts of Africa to leapfrog outdated infrastructures and democratise access to financial tools with more decentralisation and transparency,” Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare CEO and co-founder said.
Founded in 2018 by Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny, Michael Riabzev, and Alessandro Chiesa, StarkWare develops zero-knowledge proof systems, to address scalability challenges in blockchain networks like Ethereum. StarkWare’s primary products include StarkEx, a scaling engine launched in June 2020 that aggregates transactions into a single proof for cost and energy efficiency, and StarkNet, a decentralised Layer 2 network introduced in June 2021 that enables scalable decentralized applications (dApps) with lower fees.
“StarkNet is a particularly interesting path to blockchain, as it is currently a Layer 2 over Ethereum and plans to also operate over Bitcoin,” Kamal said. “This can be great for Africa as it can mean that the ‘scaling squared’ approach also means a ‘liquidity squared’ approach.”
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